Return of risk: The growing movement to let kids play like kids

This doesn’t mean all those merry go rounds, jungle gyms and teeter totters are being re-installed. But a new breed of nature-oriented playground featuring rough materials, including some that offer the opportunity for a fall from some height, are being built with more than just safety in mind

It screamed danger to some who gathered at a town hall about Lord Selkirk School’s new playground plans three and a half years ago. What if the children were running over the hill, didn’t see the rocks and tumbled down, scraping their knees and elbows or worse?

Stormie Duchnycz, principal of the Winnipeg school, and the landscape designer who was working on the plans carefully explained its hidden virtues: The rocky hill would help expose their children to nature, it would be physically challenging and engage the whole of their little bodies. Kids would be aware of their surroundings, but their imaginations would also run wild as they incorporate the rocks into their play.

Knowing full well the negative side effects of too much sitting time and too little stimulation (read: obesity and boredom), parents warmed to the idea and the rocky hill was built. (The school promised to ramp up supervision, casting more adult eyes on the rocky hill and also the “wiggle wall” made from one-to-two-foot-tall stumps that acts as a kind of balance beam, Ms. Duchnycz said.)

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Risk has famously been banned from Canadian school playgrounds, so the Winnipeg playground marked a small victory for the growing movement of educators, parents, designers and physicians who argue that it makes for boring, barren spaces that children just don’t want to play on.

This doesn’t mean all those merry go rounds, jungle gyms and teeter totters are being re-installed. But a new breed of nature-oriented playground featuring rough materials, including some that offer the opportunity for a fall from some height, are being built with more than just safety in mind.

John Woods for National Post

Last week, advocates lobbying for a more natural, challenging schoolyard announced the formation of the International School Grounds Alliance, a global voice to address the “increasingly sedentary and risk-averse generation of children disconnected from nature.” Its members hail from Australia, Canada, Germany, Japan, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States — all countries hoping to trade ideas and become an influential force that will help schools see the learning opportunities that can come from peering under rocks and maybe even skinning a knee during recess.

Their call is boosted by a growing body of research that is discovering the benefits of a little bit of risk in a child development — it helps with problem-solving and conflict management, it develops resiliency and leadership skills, it helps build physical strength. Advocates also say it will make kids healthier and happier and help this generation of parents peel away the bubblewrap a bit, even as plenty of school administrators remain wary of any potential for injury on the playground.

The international alliance has introduced lots of ideas for how to re-introduce risk, many of the more tangible ones from parks and schoolyards in Berlin, Germany: a rough hewn bridge that introduces kids to natural textures, a tensioned, spider web-like play structure that helps them problem solve and develop a sense of balance, a boulder wall made of natural stone that kids can climb and jump off of.

“We’re not fans of broken arms,” said Cam Collyer, co-founder of the ISGA and program director of Evergreen Canada, a national charity that promotes healthy communities. “But we’re fans of broken arms if there’s enormous play and learning value on a landscape instead of providing a flat barren space.”

He cites a report from a public insurer in Germany last summer that urged landscape architects to build riskier playgrounds to improve children’s health and learning opportunities. Insurance companies in Germany have also found a higher rate of accidents on playgrounds built to be safe than on “adventure playgrounds” designed to keep parents and adults at bay and encourage creativity in children, Mr. Collyer said.

John Woods for National Post

While adventure playgrounds had their heyday in the 1970, they’ve virtually vanished from North America, Mr. Collyer said. The focus on safety became paramount throughout the 1990s and playgrounds were taken down and replaced with safer models.

Back in 2000, the Toronto District School Board did a massive cull of school playgrounds deemed a serious hazard to children —tearing up jungle gyms and tire swings in order to comply with new voluntary Canadian Standards Association requirements. The community was outraged, and it may well have served as the beginnings of a backlash to the risk-free playground.

In recent years, the playground equipment industry has been working to meet this heightened demand for riskier playgrounds, said Scott Belair, a Toronto-based playground and recreation consultant, who is the lead instructor for the Canadian Playground Safety Institute.

He would like to say school play structures are moving towards a brighter future where creative play is king, but Health Canada’s recall of the Slalom Glider — a long, tongue-like, platform-free slide for kids eight and up — back in March is a potent reminder to him that there are bumps in the road.

“I would have said ahead of this recall we were heading towards new, innovative and exciting playgrounds, but now I don’t know,” he said. Recalls such as these have a huge ripple effect and can dissuade companies from producing this type of equipment in the future.

Arne Glassbourg/National Post files

This slide was recalled after 16 reported injuries in the United States since it began production in 2006, all in children under eight who were not meant to ride the slide in the first place, he said. To put the injury rate into context, he said, there are an average of 220 reported injuries from swings every year in the United States.

There are other roadblocks, including activists who ask why we’d create risks when we’ve spent 20 years trying to eliminate them.

Kristen Gane of Safe Kids Canada worries the new schoolyard alliance’s focus on embracing “risk-taking as an essential component of learning and child development,’ as their press announcement reads, is too vague and means parents should lower their guard when it comes to supervision and give their kids free reign.

“‘Embrace risk-taking’ to me sounds like it’s too enthusiastic a take, it places too much emphasis on it,” she said. “I don’t think that in order to have pleasure and fun and exploration in the playground you need to focus on increasing risk.”

‘We’re not fans of broken arms. But we’re fans of broken arms if there’s enormous play and learning value’

Barren spaces can be good opportunities for children to think outside the box, she said — they can bring a ball to kick around, find other equipment to help entertain themselves.

Indeed, schools are trying to meet in the middle —juggling the desire for more stimulation and exposure to nature but also comply with safety standards often prescribed by the school board and/or the province.

Holyrood School in Edmonton built an outdoor classroom with stumps and logs kids can jump on or sit on and they’re working on finishing the construction of a teepee that will have strategically placed poles so students can’t climb atop it or shimmy up the poles, said assistant principal Suzanne Préfontaine.

“When we put our trees in, we needed to make sure our trees were not creating hidden spaces — we want to make sure that all sightlines are [preserved]. When we were putting in the log seating, we had to make sure the distance between the logs was appropriate [for jumping],” she said. “I don’t think in our minds we’re thinking lawsuits, we’re thinking ‘Is it safe and what’s the worst that could happen to a child [on that structure]?”

Ms. Duchnycz at Winnipeg’s Lord Selkirk School also had to meet the school division’s approvals for safety, but she does embrace the need for challenge on the playground, and many parents have too.

She’s seen an improvement in the kids since the new play area was built —they’re more spread out, no longer spending all their time on the flat-top playing with the tether ball or the four square. There’s also less conflict during recess, and the students at the K-6 school realize the potential challenges of navigating the rock wall. They’re wary, but in a good way, she said.

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